On Skills, and Mechanisms

For all the pontificating and posturing that I do, I'm really a fly-by-night operation.

For example, I cruise through life, mostly ever alert, waiting for a cue, a spark, to launch me off on something. It's not like I sit down and think, "What am I gonna think about, today?"

I'm a type who doesn't like to know what the day is gonna hold. I don't like agendas; they make me itchy and restless and claustrophobic, because it means the path is already defined for me, and that restricts my illusion of freedom, of discovery. OK, so I'm an adventure junky. I get off on all realms.

But I digress, which happens often. LOL.

So, I'm reading a post this morning, and the Where's Waldo brain kicks in, and this term pops off the page to me: coping skills. And off to the races goes the mind. Coping skills.

Immediately, the mind starts grinding out a discussion about skills, and how that word is linked to coping, but it's not the only one that is, and here's why:

The word skill implies, um, well, let's look it up in the thesaurus:

accomplishment, address, adroitness, aptitude, art, artistry, bag, cleverness, clout, command, competence, craft, cunning, deftness, dexterity, dodge*, ease, experience, expertise, expertism, expertness, facility, finesse, goods*, handiness, ingenuity, intelligence, job, knack*, know-how*, line, makings, mastership, mastery, moxie*, one's thing*, profession, proficiency, prowess, quickness, readiness, right stuff*, savvy*, skillfulness, sleight, smarts*, stuff*, talent, technique, trade, work

Now, LOL, aside from a few (bag, goods, line, etc - HA!), most these words suggest that skill is not a passive event but rather an active one that takes some forethought and determined action, with a sort of plan to it.

That a skill is not a default action, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

So, I was reading about how the addict in recovery loses their main coping skill, and I'm immediately struck that this is the wrong marriage of terminology. The word mechanism pops to mind, at that moment. The addict has lost a coping mechanism, but it was a default behavior and therefore not a skill per se, but rather a mechanism.

I rather like that word, mechanism. It implies machinery - something that is not cognizant but rather mechanical, automated, apart from anything sentient. Something that can be set in motion and it goes on its own, unattended. Something that is independent of a person - any operator can get mechanism going if they are told what switch to pull.

But skill is different. Skill is something you must learn, and with practice. It is a marriage of your mind, with work, and practice. It is something, indeed, one aims to improve, and master. It is dimensional - you can have different levels of a skill, of the same skill. You may be a lousy gymnast or a world class one, for example. Skill is somewhat personal, and individual; it may contain nuances, creativity, and flair. It's, in my mind, a totally different beast from mechanism.

So, you can see where I'm going with this, I'm sure.

Our job, traveling, is to weed out the coping mechanisms, and replace them with coping skills.

And to do so, we must be mindful that one is a default action, the other a learned, determined action. So, again, our challenger Time comes into play. Normies spend their whole lives developing coping skills to one extent or another. Many of them are not so very successful, or close to mastery. Addicts, on top of this, spend many years off the merry-go-round of this learning curve. And one day, they wake up, on the path to sobriety, with decades of Time gone by where the learning curve for coping skills was abandoned.

Two facets then slap the face of one in recovery: Acceptance, and Payment. Ouch, damn! On both accounts.

First, our challenger, Acceptance. Yes, years were lost, opportunities were not used, skills were not developed. And now, an awakening that we need skills - that we no longer want mechanisms. That nothing is free, unlike what our addictions used to try to convince us. Everything has a price, period. We can't just escape, avoid, run. We have to Accept the reality that it's not easy, and it is expensive, and this is the only reality. Acceptance is always a challenge to me, and I suspect it is for others, as well.

Second, Payment. So, to get from point A (mechanisms) to point B (skills), we're gonna have to pay. And we're gonna use two currencies, neither of which is much exchangeable: Time, and Work. We cannot trade a mechanism for a skill without Time, or Work.

But, take heart. While the labor can be toilsome, we win, in the end. Because these payments are investments. They return on the payment, with interest. We are no longer toiling through each day for miserable survival. We are planting a harvest that will yield richly. In joy. In relationships. In quality of life.

So, what's the take-home? The moral of our ramblings? The daily application to life?

For me, it's that I now know that every morning when I get up, I have the same reality. And that reality is that I may or may not Arrive anywhere, today. But Life costs. So, today, I'm gonna have to put in a payment. In Time, and Work, toward my goals. I may not pay off anything today, but I'll be that much closer.

You see, it's all in the expectations, how we view our daily lives.

OK, time to get to work, folks. I have bills to pay...

-The Traveler